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18 teacher may 2008 National News White ? ight A Sydney Morning Herald report by Anna Patty on a confi dential report by the New South Wales Secondary Principals Council on principals’ perceptions about student enrolment patterns almost single-handedly created an alarmist new educational issue, ‘white fl ight,’ in March. According to Patty’s report, the con- fi dential survey of 163 NSW high school principals – a third of the NSW Secondary Principals Council membership – was pre- sented to the NSW government in February 2006, but has never been released. Patty reported that principals in New England estimate that 56 per cent of the Anglo-European students who left their public schools went to private schools. In North Sydney, 35 per cent of students who left the public system went to private schools. According to Patty, ‘The report shows the percentage of Anglo-European students in public schools has decreased by a third in western NSW, by 42 per cent in North Sydney and 37 per cent in New England.’ The period during which those percentage decreases occurred was not reported. ‘This is almost certainly white fl ight from towns in which the public school’s enrol- ment consists increasingly of Indigenous students,’ Patty quoted from the report. ‘The pattern is repeated in the Sydney region. Based on comments from principals, this (pattern in Sydney) most likely consists of fl ight to avoid Islamic students and com- munities.’ According to Patty’s report, the survey quotes one principal as saying, ‘The Asian students are scared off by Lebanese enrol- ment at our school following the Cronulla riots – we had 18 no-shows on day one in Year 11, mostly Asian.’ The confi dential NSW Secondary Prin- cipals Council report appears to rely on principals’ perceptions by means of a self- report survey, rather than statistical evi- dence of the actual scale of ‘white fl ight.’ Victorian Minister for Education Bronwyn Pike released two ‘education blueprint’ dis- cussion papers last month – a Blueprint for Early Childhood Development and a Blueprint for School Reform – that aim to: create a ‘culture of excellence’ in the Victorian education system, overhaul the teaching workforce, and develop stronger links between schools and parents. Pike said the proposed reforms put an increased emphasis on ensuring every stu- dent progresses in school, on new ways to equip students and the school workforce with what they need to succeed, and on new ways to encourage high-performing principals and teachers to work at under- performing schools. Pike’s blueprint proposals for school reform build in a range of accountability measures, including stronger interventions and more intensive monitoring in under- performing schools, and monitoring and incentives to ensure that adequately perform- ing schools are encouraged to improve Pike also proposes a scheme to encourage high-performing graduates from other fi elds to enter teaching, along the lines of the Brit- ish Teach First model and the United States Teach for America model; incentives, includ- ing higher salaries, for ‘the best teachers and school leaders to work in those schools where they are needed most’; and mechanisms to help teachers who have become disengaged to leave the profession, after appropriate opportunities and support have been pro- vided to lift teaching practice. Pike said talented teachers could help lift standards in under-performing schools. ‘We’re prepared to offer incentives to make sure we get some of our best teachers to move,’ she said. ‘What we want to see are measurements of progress within our schools, and league tables are often a very crude way of compar- ing performance,’ Pike said. ‘Every school is different, every school has different priori- ties, different strengths and different weak- nesses, but what we want to know is that every school is improving.’ According to the Blueprint for School Reform, ‘Teachers deserve a clearly articu- lated career path, including an instructional model that outlines developmental levels, creates a common language and shared practice, and supports teachers in ongoing professional learning to move from novice to expert practitioners. They should be able to focus on teaching. It is critical to reward high-performing teachers, both in recogni- tion and performance-based reward. We need to improve our succession planning so teachers know where they are headed and we can identify and prepare the next generation of school principals and leaders. And by making teachers more accountable for their students’ outcomes, we can more easily encourage good teachers to remain in the profession and assist disengaged teach- ers to leave.’ Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said the gov- ernment fi rst needed to address pay and working conditions. More than 10,000 Victorian state school teachers took strike action, as well as a campaign of 35 four- hour rolling stoppages between February and April, to put pressure on the govern- ment in negotiations for a new agreement on teacher pay, workload, class sizes and contract employment. The negotiations have already had their fi rst birthday. The top of the salary increment for a Victorian state school teacher is $65,414 a year. In Queensland it’s $69,225; in Western Australia it’s $71,067; and in NSW it’s $75,352. It’s not hard to imagine which way the traffi c runs in Albury-Wodonga. Victorian blueprint for school reform